Summer of 60 Pins, #24: Organizing Spices

The Pin: Okay, I'm cheating a little again because I don't have an inspiring pin. I do have a backstory, though. Two summers ago, my spices were on this rack in the pantry:

Yep, I had so many spices that I needed two racks. And they were all alphabetized. And the spice containers fit nicely in these racks. The only problem was I had to walk all the way from my workspace to the pantry to get them. First-world problems...

I moved the spices to my upper lazy susan closer to the stove last summer:

This created a myriad of problems. First, Jim likes to use Pam cooking spray and put it back wherever. Second, I'm too short to see the labels of most of the spices. Third, the spices did not stay alphabetized. Fourth, we started storing things on the side of the shelf, causing the wheel not to spin.

I decided to move the spices to a shelf. The only problem now was that there were pans on the shelf:

Fortunately, they are 13 x 9 pans. I moved our rarely used George Foreman Grill from prime shelf space to the bottom of my pantry.

I already had a shelf riser, so I alphabetized the spices:

This led to another problem - I couldn't see the short spices because of the tall spices, and I'm too lazy to get matching containers. So I took a deep breath and dealphabetized the spices. Yes, dealphabetized is a word, at least in my vocabulary!

Much better. Plus, the big spices on the side are turned so I can see what they are. I never knew I had a thing about turning labels until this summer.

I had to make the spices fit, so I threw out old ones and duplicate (and triplicate) spices. I hope this will prevent us from buying cinnamon every trip to HEB.

The lazy susan could then hold the bigger salt and Pam, no problem:

Plus the other canisters, which had a previous life on the top shelf:

Here is the whole lazy susan, with less-used sprinkles on top:

The Good: I like the location of the spices better, and the bigger items on the lazy susan are more visible.

The Bad: The spices are near the stove, and heat is supposed to dull the spices. The move confused my family. Here is my conversation with Jim:

Jim: Why did you move the spices?

Me: Because they weren't functional.

Jim: Why weren't they functional?

Me: Because I'm short and couldn't see them and they got dealphabetized.

Jim: Wh-

Me: Why did you cut the watermelon on the counter across from the sink instead of next to the sink so that I could just wipe the juice into the sink?

Jim: Because I'm an idiot.

Love ya, hon!

Summary: I'm happy with everything for now - we'll see how functional the set-up is!